fandomhigh | MSND [slowplay]

Fairy!Allie caught the look and interjected more enthusiasm as she delivered her next line.

And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!

Smiling as He knows the scene so well, Oberon stalks onto the stage, looking for whoever it is who will be playing his liege lady. He may absently smooth his kilt as he stands tall, alert and austere.

"Pet his arms," Zero hissed. "What? Look at them, pet his arms! ...they are very nice arms, but--are you sure? I WILL MALLET YOU! I'm petting, I'm petting!" Puck inched toward Oberon and started patting his arm. The girl seemed to calm down immediately. Thank Mab.

To keep her quiet, Titania allows the girl to dance onto the stage, rage whirling fast in circles as she makes her entrance, then reasserts control again as she comes to a stop in front of Oberon.

Fair, I see. Well, he always was.

Lee's better than fair, and even if I'm mad at him, your husband better not do anything to him!

And her rage and Parker's merged, her desire and Parker's thwarted feelings, and they both gave their husband/lover/friend a scimitar of a smile.

Amused by the young sprite at his arm, Oberon smiles down at her and has to regain his calm as he recognizes his henchman at once, though inhabiting another form. A wicked smile grows across his human lips and he winks at her.

At last the human playing his wife arrives and He is most pleased, but hides it with a look of fury. Let us see how she will react to this...

"Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania," he breathes (loud enough for the audience to hear yet soft and deep enough to rattle the stage).

"What, jealous Oberon!" And oh, it is good that he is jealous, good that he, given his many, many crimes against their marriage, dares still to want her. The girl agrees readily, and her chin goes up in the gesture she practiced with the Lord Shaper, regal and cold.

"Fairies, skip hence: I have forsworn his bed and company." As if they needed to be informed. As if all did not know why they were here, this night, because of his calumny.

"Tarry, rash wanton," he almost roared, hoping to see the human jump. He stalked towards her, watching her intensely. He grabbed her arm and forced her three steps closer so that she was flush against him. "Am not I thy lord?"

And it was at that moment that he realized that he wasn't the only royal fairy on the stage. And that She was inhabiting this insignificant human female.

Oh, he was fucked.

"Then I must be thy lady," Titania purred, leaning toward him a hair's breath closer, and the laughter in the back of her mind was as familiar as her own. Oh, he had thought himself so clever, did he? Had not imagined she would know him first? Her delight and malice must be visible in the farthest row.

She gave his hand on her arm a look of scorn, and freed herself with one quick pull, stepping back, ice coating her words. "But I know when thou hast stolen away from fairy land," always, always, every time, "and in the shape of Corin sat all day, playing on pipes of corn and versing love to amorous Phillida."

The girl folded her/their arms, more slowly than was her wont, and leaned back on her spine, allowing her smile to fade to nothingness. "Why art thou here, come from the farthest Steppe of India?"

The internal snarl on that brought of a flash of other young women to mind, both blonde, both athletic, and lovely enough for Oberon to favor them. Acid would taste kinder than her next words. Oberon, you fool. Lee, you idiot.

" But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon, your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love-- to Theseus must be wedded," she drawled, repeating words written for her, for her sake, and hers alone, no matter what Oberon had ever believed; the Lord Shaper had been kind in this parting gift. "And you come to give their bed joy and prosperity."

He had them write the play for you?

From one love to another.

And that kept the girl quiet in shock for several seconds.

He had regained his calm at this point, hearing Her speak the lines they had both laughed over for centuries. The human, still sleeping in his shell, had a mind full of bouncing Amazons and He grinned into the memory of beautiful blonde women. He was as hungry as the sea and could digest as much.

But so was She, bound to him for eternity.

And looking quite lovely in that lithe human shape.

He gave her a cruel smile when it was his cue. "How canst thou thus for shame, Titania, glance at my credit with Hippolyta, Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?" He circled her slowly, an even pace and his eyes never leaving her form. "Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night from Perigenia, whom he ravished? And make him with fair AEgle break his faith, with Ariadne and Antiopa?" The lines were far prettier than the truth of what happened but he admired the poetry as much as he admired the lines of anger on the human's face, mirroring the creature inside.

"These are the forgeries of jealousy."

As if he ever cared what mortals she dallied with; it was lords of the Court, and persons of equal station, who aroused his hire. Morpheus had been one of the very few to make him fear, and that love had been all the sweeter for that.

If she could kill the emotion that brought her back to him, time and again, she would do so, happily, and pay whatever price. Her fickle, fierce lord. More pain than pleasure, of late.

"...by their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original."

Mortals must be wary when they fought; as these children were now learning.

The staging that the human had memorized tickled His fancy and so he took her hand in his, caressing the palm with his thumb before placing it over his human heart (speeding rapidly as humans from this far off Kaprika Island were not suited for long term fairy inhabitation).

"Do you amend it then; it lies in you," he asks sweetly, a false dearness in his voice.

Grabbing her waist now with his other hand he pulls her back into his embrace, her back against his chest, his mouth at her ear. "Why should Titania cross her Oberon?" he asks.

"I do but beg a little changeling boy, to be my henchman," he continues, thinking on the truth of this moment, how important it was to him to add human changelings to his ranks for their beauty and intelligence. How quickly they turned into valuable captains of his armies, leaders and advisors. A treasure to His Order -- and She seemed to attain more of these small humans than He. He seethes in the age old fury.

For just a moment, the memory of passion has her melting back into his arms; the girl's memories, as well as her own. For only a moment, she remembers what it was like, the first time they met, the shine of stars on a summer night.

Then he continues to speak, and her heart turns stony again. Always his rank before hers; always his desires, before her own. Never a sacrifice for her sake, no.

She arched her back against him, and pitched her voice to carry, hard and unyielding, even as her body tried to betray her again.

"Set your heart at rest: the fairy land buys not the child of me." She smiled up at him winningly, then stepped out of his embrace. But let one hand linger in his, a lady to her knight. Which he had never been, truly.

" His mother was a votaress of my order: And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip'd by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands, Marking the embarked traders on the flood,
When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind; Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait Following,
--her womb then rich with my young squire,--
Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise."

How much time had passed, since they were gone? The girl within her said four hundred mortal years and more, but that was but a shadow of time. Mortals no longer worshipped them, now. Or feared them, if the behavior of her court's steeds was any clue.

Perhaps they should take a few of them with them, when they left.

Children, always children. So few, so wanted. Something about them that no fairy child, quick and immortal and adult within days, would ever have.

"But she, being mortal, of that boy did die; And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him."

Oberon's fury on her success should have been banked years ago. There were other matters he should concern himself with...

And Lord Morpheus here, when he was already gone and transformed. Here, when she had attended his wake.

Let them not come together, oh gods.

He skipped a line or two, furious at her for this injury yet again and again occurring in their centuries of life together. "GIVE ME THAT BOY," he roared stepping back into her personal space, eyes golden with anger.

"Not for thy fairy kingdom," Parker hissed into his face. Titania blinked her/their eyes, unamused that the girl broke free to say the words herself in a snarl to raise hairs on the back of the neck.

"Fairies, away! We shall chide downright do I longer stay!" And best to get herself and the girl to a quiet spot, for a little talk on how one addresses the King of Beasts and Fairies.

They danced offstage with all haste, out of sight of one who must not know of any difficulty.

He watches Her depart with narrowed eyes and then positions himself away from her, angled towards the audience as He hisses low, "Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove till I torment thee for this injury."

Cruelty is ever the easiest and fairest judgment of the fairy kingdom. The particular level of vengeance portrayed in this text written centuries ago paled to what He had done to his Queen and likewise to how She had punished Him through the years.

But the human mind, the treasure that it was, could not fathom the depths of the fairy mind.

"My gentle Puck, come hither," he says absently, half as a line and half as the true words he speaks almost daily. As Puck comes closer to him, he notes that the human must be struggling inside of him and a smile curves on his lips. How wonderful. Putting his arm around the girl, he speaks his plot with a joyous lilt in his deep voice, crashing through the young human male's vocal capacity.

"…Having once this juice, I'll watch Titania when she is asleep, and drop the liquor of it in her eyes. The next thing then she waking looks upon, be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, or meddling monkey, or on busy ape, she shall pursue it with the soul of love: and ere I take this charm from off her sight, as I can take it with another herb, I'll make her render up her page to me," he says, a dreamy look in his eyes as he recalls her outrage at such similar incidents throughout the years. She belongs to Him and every dalliance, every change in affection will result in His vengeance.

He shakes himself out of his memory to the script as he remembers it. "But who comes here? I am invisible; and I will overhear their conference," he states, listening to the oncoming human actors and turning - quite truly - into an oak tree.

There was a heavy pause, and then the creature dressed in Logan's body skittered out on stage.
"Do I entice you?" he gasped, eyes darting around. The words tumbled from his mouth as fast as he could shove them. "Do I speak you fair? Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth/ Tell you, I do not, nor I cannot love you?"

He inched slowly towards the wings, waiting for his cue to leave.

Well, Oberon had at least tried to turn himself into a tree.

Something in the air kept him from using his powers to their full capacity. Grumbling, he grabbed some fake branches and held them strategically in a "I AM SO TOTALLY A TREE" pose. And he stared at the human creature that just bounded unto the stage. This was the human he was to trick into loving some bimbo with no backbone? Oberon sighed. Well, at least the human was rather cute. He adjusted one of the branches to get a better look.

"Helelelena" giggled a little before speaking and leaned toward her Demetrius. "And even for that do I love you the more. I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, The more you beat me, I will fawn on you: Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave, Unworthy as I am, to follow you. What worser place can I beg in your love,--
And yet a place of high respect with me,-- Than to be used as you use your dog?"

Somewhere deep inside, Callisto was screaming as she continued the argument with her would-be lover.

If the lad playing the vengeful human lover was cute, the amazon playing the lovesick woman was 100% His Type. He stared in absolute shock at the lovely woman as the scene played out, not listening to the words or paying much attention to anything else. Her blonde tresses were stunning in the stage light and she had a grace to her that few humans had. Oh, goddess, he thought, forgetting himself as he drank in her image.

However, there was a play to continue as she left the stage. And his sweet Puck had arrived again, perfectly on cue.

" Welcome, wanderer! Hast thou the flower there?" he asked, dropping the branches to the ground and standing at attention.

Ay, there it is. Puck said, rolling his -- her? -- eyes a little at the banality of the scripted words.

He passed the plant to Oberon.

His eyes gleamed. "I pray thee, give it me."

He took the flower and caressed a petal before placing it behind his ear. Putting his arm around Puck, he begun the beautiful speech about the place where Titania sleeps, "I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, where oxlips and the nodding violet grows…"

Easily, he told his henchman his plans and the next step in them – to help the lovesick amazon to her beloved Demetrius. It shamed him to speak the vague orders to Puck who would screw everything up, creating a hilarious comedic farce in the middle of his woods but he continued through the dialogue till his faithful servant departed.

Taking a moment to stare out into the audience, searching for a beautiful face framed with blonde hair. It took him only a few seconds to find and treasure it before leaving the stage himself.

MSND [slowplay]

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